


Caught & Cauterized

by QuillHeart



Series: Loss & Connection [1]
Category: DOGS (Manga)
Genre: Action, Back-alley doctoring, Badou means well, Bishop is a BAMF, Blood Loss, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Church Dungeon, Comedic Relief Badou, Gen, Gun Violence, Gun fights, Medical Trauma, Swearing, medical drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 20:02:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4113163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillHeart/pseuds/QuillHeart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Badou often encounters the unexpected with Heine, which causes him to ever reassess their relationship, and the mysteries that surround his partner. This time, after a gun battle that goes awry, it's the need to damage his body further to set the healing process right. But that means a straight face with a steady hand, neither of which Badou is very good at.  (Un)Luckily for them, Bishop happens to be a master of both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am a horror writer with a twisted sense of humor that likes medical drama.
> 
> That is all.

Badou held against the wall, humidity clinging to him while _he_ clung to the wall.

Silence.

He held his guns by his chest and breathed, quickly, quietly.  His fingers were slick against the triggers.

He didn’t dare take the time to wipe them.

Around the corner was Heine, doing his thing, saving them from a bad bust.  Turns out he was pretty good at faking a junkie.  Not so good at dodging bullets from the guys on the stuff.  It fine-tuned the madness and the reactions, but the aim was bad—unpredictable.  Heine fighting people as tweaked-out as he was all the time: not something Badou needed to be caught up in.

He had been pushed aside, what he liked to call “covering their progress.”  There had been rounds of shooting, unbroken, for several minutes to either side of Badou’s hearing.  Single-fire handguns, though.

So now, Badou breathed within the silence, ears tuned to movements.

Nothing.

But it wasn’t the sort of silence that told him something was over.  All the bullets from multiple arms suddenly stopping meant—

Two shots, unsynchronized.  Loud; from different guns.  A body, hitting the ground.  Then, more silence.

Blood spurted across the wall opposite Badou, a fine fan of red ripping apart the ungodly white.

Badou waited.  Waited quite a while, in fact, his head tipped back; his view a healthy dose of ceiling.  He could feel the blood oozing down the wall like it was crawling over his skin.

No movement.  No voices.  There was either one man left, or none.  The time was nigh: the time to hope it wasn’t his man on the floor.

He edged out, and was immediately granted a better view of the already-dead guy sprawled in the near corner.  Badou checked behind himself, then threw out a decoy—some guy’s hat.

No shots.  No sound of someone changing weight on their feet.

Quickly: a glance beyond the corner that was his shield.

No movement.

A glance with head exposed a few more inches: most of the hallway visible.

No one standing.

He crouched; with gun at the lead, he half-bared his body and faced fully the open space.

The corridor was empty of standing bodies.  He scanned the floor: No eyes glaring. No weapons pointed at him from around corpses, around corners.  There was another blind bend in the hallway about 25 feet down; it too, was white: No round grey shapes lining the vertical edges.

He waited a couple more seconds, listening.  This was as safe as safe could get.

Why, oh why, was Heine one of the bodies on the floor.

He noticed the white ruff first, the spikey fur his quick-guide for finding the man in a melee of people to shoot.  It caught his eye this time too, perky tips at odds with the black-clad curves of Heine’s arms as they slumped against the ground.

He lay solitary in ten-foot ring of clear space, minus one substantially larger guy on the far side of him from Badou’s view.  His back was to Badou; the once-human obstacles in view and his fluffed-up collar concealed any defacto evidence of death.

But Badou knew.

It was instinct, if you would, but that never made it less eerie to look upon in silence.  The body fell a certain way when it was unable to move; it had a similar way of lying.  Everything was too still.  The strands of the fur collar were the only thing that moved, wavering gently in the unseen air moving around the place.

It wasn’t hard to tell, though, despite the lack of details on his person, the general type of problem that had befallen him: A bright splatter of red stretched out along the middle of the wall, like a slice of pie that started solid and ended as a wide arc of fine spray.  It stretched for at least five feet, and some of it even hit the ceiling.

So he caught it straight in the carotid, and the blood trail followed him all the way to the concrete, a line of splatter so thick it turned into streams.  The bottom few drops were just getting into his hair, bleeding slowly into the strands where his head was bent into the wall.

He really, really wasn’t moving.

Badou shook, and refused to accept either.

He checked around again, quickly.  It was usually best to just leave Heine.  And if his re-gen counter had come up short, no point in sticking around.  But it would be more helpful in the long run if he would— _Get up, Heine_.

More like, get up and get shot again as Badou’s shield.  Badou wasn’t useless, and he faced just as many head-on when he had to, but that was generally the reality of the situation when dealing with cracked-out freaks: Heine could simply take more bullets than Badou, because Badou wouldn’t get back up.  He liked to think that, even though Heine thought of himself as only a weapon, he could appreciate that Badou thought of him as a shield.

Leather, creaking.  The tight kind, like around Heine’s legs.  A gasp, deep, like coming up for air after too long.  Only this was the death rattle—a thing you hear about in back rooms and late night spook stories.  The body clears the passageways just in time to never use them again.  The soul escaping, the churchly folk might call it.

Just like the body laying too still, there was a sense to this.  Something you’d never encountered before, but still knew was ... _wrong_ , in some deep, confusing way that made whatever came next traumatizing.  Badou was not sure if he’d ever get used to it, but he had heard it first-hand too many times to count.  It was impossible to know how many times Heine had lived it.

Yet here he was, crouching behind Heine, one hand gripping the man’s shoulder and one hand gripping his own gun.

Heine spasmed, without breath, and then curled up tighter.  His right hand was still on his weapon, though the grip was less than attentive.

And then, _finally_ , merciful steam started to rise from between the fingers Heine held over his red neck.

Quickly, silently, Badou maneuvered.  He almost planted his nose into Heine’s trail of blood on the wall; for a second, he just stared at all the copper-smelling red, from Heine’s chin down into his open shirt.  It coated every contour, glinting here and there and making diagnosis impossible by sight alone.

Swearing, he drove his hand under Heine’s and pressed into the slick fluid.  Heine hissed.

The smell overwhelmed.  It really did smell like copper, like money—and just like his own.

Heine’s jacket brushed against his knuckles: the man had moved.

“Heine,” Badou whispered, just as the piece in the albino’s hand aimed toward him. Knowing it was coming, Badou caught his wrist and kept it away, the ends of his hair draping onto Heine’s cheek as he shifted.  “ _Heine_ ,” Badou said again, sharply, gripping at flesh as he pushed against the insistent resistence of Heine’s gun arm.  “Did you get them all?”

Heine’s skin was warm.  A little clammy, on the skin uncovered by the glove.  His pulse was quick.  Heine’s wrist jerked several times.  Finally it stilled, but Badou knew better than to release his grip.

Suddenly, Heine’s finger released the trigger, and he jerked his hand away.  Badou let the appendage fall to the floor, where it stayed.  From this angle, it was easy to see Heine’s red jaw; Badou slid his now-free hand under his partner’s neck.  The other pressed more tightly to the wound.

Heine’s hand dug into his.

They were boney joints, slicked with shimmering, warm blood still, but the skin against his own felt cold.

Heine breathed, albeit shaky.  Each breath was long, but very shallow, staccatoed with skips and coughs.  He grew no less tense.  His eyes stared ahead, not on Badou for a moment.  They were intent.

So there was still someone out there.

Badou eyed the corner ahead of them.  Without taking his eye of it, he got as low as he could and asked, “You gonna make it this time?” He pressed his palm deeper into Heine’s neck.  Heine blinked hard and sucked in a breath—he actually flinched.

As if furious, Heine breathed in, then out.  Hacked.

In, then out.

Tremors ran through his neck muscles.

Footsteps, on the other side of the wall.  Heavy, multiple.

Badou and Heine’s guns extended at the same time.

What he supposed was a body appeared.  He didn’t bother looking anywhere other than the torso—anywhere other than where his eye was trained.  There wasn’t time.  Funny, how it became just a “human shape” and copies of the same as sent bullets to them.  The gun recoiled in his hand, but he kept it on point, once, twice.  Vaguely, he was aware of the reverberation of Heine’s weapon through the arm that held his life in.

He couldn’t hear anything for a second.  A third shape got nailed at the edge; three shapes fell.

A pause.  He didn’t hear the bodies hitting the ground.  All he saw was white.

Heine breathed at the same time he did.  The feeling of a body expanding with breath was more comforting than it should have been.

The muzzle of a rapid-fire curled around the corner, the downward intent of a black circle and slender barrel unmistakable.  It stared him between the eyes, like a snake to the flute.

And then Heine’s hand was coming at his face.

It was darkness to the sound of gunfire.  For a few seconds, he had no idea what was going on, but registered every sound as pain; every touch a wound to jerk away from.

And then it was silent.

There were no sensations, at first; the bullets had stolen them away.  He couldn’t see anything; for a moment that stretched for minutes, he thought he was blind.  He jerked away from touch against his face and saw light.  Indefinable, but enough.

There were points everywhere that prickled.  But nothing . . . nothing, as he moved, that moved like torn flesh.

He breathed, and breathed. . . . And why could he hear only breathing?

He listened for anything else, but there was too much ringing in his ears, too hoarse of rattle in his chest.  Too close. Everything was too close, and dark, and not-pain.

A short, sucked-in hiss of a breath that wasn’t his.  It was loud, fighting above his own.  Someone was close; someone to get away from?— He jerked back, but didn’t budge a barrier against his back.

The voice was in his ear again.  Several shallow heaves, quick, and then rasping.  A cascade of pain hit the side of his face, hundreds of tiny needles that were—soft?

The fur on Heine’s collar.  The thing pressed into his face was not shrapnel, but Heine’s collar.

He couldn’t see anything because his head was hidden under Heine’s.

Oh, oh. Heine’s head meant Heine’s teeth—

“Are you hurt, Badou.” The words growled out, like a well-meaning curse.

“What the hell, man?” Badou squeaked.  He was shaking, and didn’t remember giving the command to himself to speak.

A glob of something wet and warm propelled onto Badou’s nose and cheek, to the sound of a hack.  It was a sharp sound, like metal striking metal.

“Did you . . . are you . . . hit?” Heine’s deep voice asked again, his eyes squeezing shut.

He arched his back.  Light flooded into Badou’s eyes and he found Heine propping himself up by his forearms, body making a cage around him.  Red ran from between his teeth, rich and dark and now dripping onto Badou’s jaw.

For a moment, Badou was distinctly aware of the _plit_ sound drops of blood made when splattering onto skin.

Heine’s head was bowed.  Badou couldn’t see much, but he could see movement around his own abs.

The shine of light between Heine and him was the glint of light off streams of blood as they fell.  One hit the tile, high-pitched; the other landed on Badou with a _pppllllllt_ , leaving a growing pool of warmth spreading across his abdomen.

A bullet dropped from somewhere inside Heine.  It fell onto Badou, bounced off, and rattled to a stop between Badou’s fingers.

It was hot.

“Shit, Heine!” Badou cried.  There was some dark mass weighing Heine down and causing him to get ever nearer.  Badou reached up to push it off, only to recoil when he felt it was soft, warm.

Hot liquid on the tile suddenly spread against his thumb.  It prickled like fire; Badou hissed and reached anywhere but the floor, even though it knocked him off balance.  He pulled up into Heine, just in time to see hands connected to a tommy gun around the shoulder of the corpse being used as Heine’s shield.

Badou pulled the trigger, and found himself gripping the back of Heine’s head for support.  Like he was holding him tight, to protect him.

The weird things you thought when your life was in danger.

Behind him, Heine’s gun went off; the distinct sound of wall exploding accompanied it.  The gun was so close to his back that Badou arched away from the heat.  He lost his balance, and Heine had to cease fire as Badou landed on his gun.  The muzzle burned.

“Badou!” Heine screamed at him over bullets.  “ _Shoot_!”

The only thing Badou could see was human flesh, and Heine.  Desperate, red eyes of a stupid kid.

Badou closed his and sprayed an arc of lead low.  He told himself he didn’t hear Heine’s cry  mixed in with the fire.

He made two distinct lines, one out and one back, the second curving into the wall beyond their heads, as well.  Heine’s arm nearest the wall turned into a mangled chunk.

The bones cracked.

Blood sprayed into his face.

Heine immediately dropped on top of Badou, but he landed on his far side, leaving Badou free to shoot the floorboards.  Hopefully, with anyone already shot in the shins, they’d be on the ground, and this peppering would be their final one.  But the Tommy—

A blue suit.

One shot between the eyes.

The gun clattered down, the sound jarring enough to cause a couple more bullets to fire from Badou.  The stray shells added a few more holes to wall, but nothing else walked into his line of sight.

The circle.  He stared at the tiny hole in the wall, perfectly round, for too long.  The circle of death.

Breath moved him; got his fingers to flex.  But it grated.  The ringing in his ears from the bullets had blown out fine hearing.  He couldn’t tell if there were shots or steps, or, or—

Badou held his weapon high, staring down the sight unblinking.  He waited, long after the smoke cleared off the barrel.

Against him, Heine was shaking.  Hyperventilating, twitching erratically with an unintelligible keen.

His working hand was digging into Badou’s back to the point that it was drawing blood.

Badou did everything in his power to not shake back.

He waited there for a long time, holding Heine in a white room painted red.


	2. Chapter 2

“Do you feel it?” Heine asked.  His voice was muffled under his arms.

Badou did.  Two fingers moved over the cylindrical lump, back and forth.  Heine was laid out stark naked on his front, paler than a cadaver.  Helping the image along was the stone slab offering preparation table Bishop had instructed him to be put on.

He really, really didn’t quite get that priest, and he really didn’t ever want to.

The room was a prep chamber in the basement, past an antechamber in the back of the church and down some secret-ish stairs behind the pulpit.  It was probably a legit room for services at some point.  But it was a cathedral under a bridge, so, really, in a tiny, square, freezing-cold basement room with rough-cut stone walls, no windows, and but a single door decorated with metal strappings, who was to say what those iron pins in the wall at even intervals were for a long time ago? “Legitimate services.” Exactly.

That priest.  Badou shook his head as he closed his eyes, tracing the outline of the lump under Heine’s skin.

It was unnerving, touching a lump he knew to be a pile of lead, yet which had a home under smooth flesh.  It was also unnerving to be touching Heine.  His hands and teeth were as pretty far away as it got, but Badou held no illusions that Heine could twist around and go for his throat faster than Badou could see him coming.

Badou eyed Heine, searching out his face.  He had his head turned to one side on folded arms, under a set of shelves on the far side of the room.  He was staring at the wall, diagnosing himself just as Badou was.

Badou went back to his hand, two fingers spread in a V.  So this was what . . . albino skin felt like.  He was warm against the chill, despite the paleness of his flesh and the stone slab he laid upon.  His skin was a little slick, too, where he wasn’t covered in dust from the floor of the coke den.  The tiny white hairs along his back were soft.

Badou ran his fingers along the tips of white, brushing them back and forth the way Heine’s collar had been wavering in the air—the hairs that still existed near his new wounds, that was.  A line of circular scars cut across his lower back like the chains attached to his guns, pools of twisted flesh without pore or follicle.

Heine let out a long hiss like steam from a kettle as Badou put one finger on either side of the bullet, pressing hard enough to bruise.  He held the small architect’s knife in the air, trying to picture what the wound would look like.

It would be a thin line, red, and deep, and then there would be a shine of copper underneath.  Straight.  Just . . . straight.  Like cutting open an orange.

Heine stilled.  His hands gripped the table.

The knife held in the air.  The air was cold, and it made Badou’s hands shake.

“I . . . really don’t want to hurt you more, Heine,” Badou announced, releasing the man and leaning his palms on the table.  The hand on the bullet slid around Heine’s naked hip; it made the flesh shiver.  Tiny hairs stand on end, all the way up his back.

For the sentiment, Badou expected a retort, or at the very least a skeptical, verbal slap in the face.  Instead, Heine looked back at him momentarily, his pink-red eyes intense . . . and puzzled.

Then, the curiously-colored head turned back to its resting spot, and he was left with nothing but a view of that hair, the spikes since fallen into a messy, flat pile matted by crusty red and washed-out pink which Heine would not, by God, be letting Nill wash, even when she would inevitably appear at the door like puppy, ready to do so.

“Be sure to leave the knife in, or the wound will close,” Heine offered. His voice betrayed a bit of youth, a lance of worry spiking through it.  The rest was oddly simple, as if he had just told Badou to remember to pack the sandwiches for the picnic. 

Badou’s red brows pushed together.

Heine stayed still though, stretched out and breathing deep, head cradled in his arms. His eyes were probably closed, white lashes curling out under white brows like sweeping snow drifts.

He looked cold though, as pale as he was.  Badou hoped it was true, so that the blood and the pain would be lessened.  Sighing, he took up again his instrument, and placed his hand around the mass to be excavated.  Heine remained still, but his shoulder twitched. 

Badou leaned in, flesh depressing to the shape of his hand.  The weapon hovered over the bullet-hill.  

Heine took a breath.  A breath not unlike the gasp after he had been so still, blood fanned out around him in that white room.

“ _Dammit_ , Heine, I don’t want to do this,” Badou begged.  He still had blood on his hands from before, even though he’d scrubbed and scrubbed to get it off. He really didn’t want to paint himself with more of Heine’s insides.

Heine raised up on his forearms and half-turned; red eyes trained on him.  “Cut me open, you damn crybaby.  I don’t have enough blood to stand let alone do surgery on myself.  Look, do you want me cut it and then you can sew it?”

What came to mind was Badou having to hold Heine down while Heine dug into his own flesh with his fingers, and then having to deal with the mess while Heine was delirious.

“No, no, I’ll do it.”  He was caught by Heine’s eyes, and it sent a little shiver through him, dropping a stone in the pit of his stomach.  “It’s just . . . I’m really sorry, man.”

“If you’re sorry, get this bullet out so I can go home and rebuild enough red blood cells to punch you for dicking around so long. Jesus, I could be getting lead poisoning while you sit here whining about seeing blood, think of that?”

Badou shook his head, getting a bead on the lump again and setting the scalpel gently atop it.  “That’s not what I’m complaining about.”

Heine laid back down with a huff that really was not unlike a dog’s, the sound disappearing into his forearms.  Extra-pale scar tissue riddled the arm Badou could see.

“I really don’t get you,” Heine muttered, like a sour child.  “If you’re not ready to get hurt, don’t get in a gun fight.”

Badou sighed.  He thought about what to say, but realized anything in his defense would be hypocritical, as it would be eminently contrary to what he was about to do.

Concentrating on the metal lump again, Badou pressed down the blade.  _Just an orange_. . . .

Under his fingertips, the muscles tensed.  The bullet moved.

He pressed harder, down into layers of flesh until he hit scraping resistance.  It was startlingly easy to see the blade dig in, then leave a slim trail of red several inches long.  It didn’t hurt at all past a sting in his gut, and Heine made no noise.  It was almost like a zipper.

Except . . . how was he supposed to keep the skin apart, now?  He had been hoping the bullet would simply pop out, but . . . this was not that kind of slug.  There would be digging involved.

And Heine was going to kill him if he dicked around in his body too long.  Not that making a mess of Heine’s body was going to matter, even to Heine, but it was just common courtesy to make back alley doctoring quick.  A quick dumping-off of the patient in some dirty corner in the middle of the night was also expected, but this particular patient knew where Badou lived, and knew several darker alleys of his own, so that part Badou was not required to fulfill.

Just cut a man open in an unheated room in the back of a church, under a single light bulb operated with a string, and leave him to deal.  That was him and Heine tonight.

So, sloppy it was.  Better it be Heine as his first attempt at playing surgeon than some other unwitting bastard who’d keep the mark.

“Heine.”  Muscles tensed, again, ever so slightly at the mild alarm in his voice.  “I don’t have anything to pull the bullet out with.”

The patient sighed, his shoulders slumping.  He hit his forehead against the table.  After a moment of stillness, the delicate white hairs around the new scars stood on end.  The skin along his back wrinkled.  From between his hands, he started growling.

It was a directive.

Badou sighed.  Fingers it was, then.

He held his hand over the hole in Heine’s back, readying.

His hands were going to be covered in red again.  Rich and dark, pooling purple and black in spots.  He’d barely had time to wash his hands after pulling Heine into this room and grabbing for the knife.  He could still feel the way Heine’s blood-slicked throat had moved under his palm.

He turned away.  Heine, ever the aware one, heard it.

“I don’t think you deserve to have your hand on my ass if you’re not going to look at me while you do it, you know.”

Badou looked back, whining.

Heine made a keen, mocking whimpering in his throat back at him, a noise that was annoyed and unamused.  “Come _on_.  You may like doing whatever in the dark but open your eye and get this bullet out of my back so my hip can heal.  It’s blocking the bone chips.”

“How can you fucking _tell_?” Badou demanded, running his hands down his face, heavy, and with fingernails involved.  He lamented his poor fate for a while longer, eventually crooning an unhappy note and then yelling in frustration.

“Fine, _fine_!”  With force, he shoved Heine’s hip down on the table.  The incision had healed while he wasn’t looking, but he dug in the knife over the thin scar line.  Heine yelped as the blade hit bullet and pushed it against his bones.  But Badou held him down, pulled the skin apart as far as it could go, and pressed his finger into the wound.  It made a nasty sucking sound.  Heine thunked his head against his arms and hissed in pain; his toes curled.  But Badou was too busy with tuning out the flesh widening around his finger to care.  He caught the edge of the slug, then dug his thumb in without apology to get the other end of the metal; flesh sliced apart like abused hamburger under his thumbnail.  His finger dug deeper, but he couldn’t quite get the bottom edge of the bullet to pop free.  So he mashed what was in his way without apology.

Something gave way.  His finger slipped.  He hit what must have been bone for the amount that Heine yelped.

And then warmth.  Liquid.  It sprayed against his palm in a jet, and the valley filled up with blood.  He lost his grip on the lead, even as he clamped his fingers together and ripped his hand out.  He came away with chunks under his fingernails and no bullet.  He stared at his hand, then yelled in frustration at his empty catch.

Through his fingers, he caught Heine moving, but Badou threw him back down and planted his palm against the red pumping out of the wound.

“What? _What,_ Badou, what was _that_!”  He tried to look over his shoulder, in that innocent alarmed that only Heine could do.

Rich crimson made dark in the low light spread from around his hand, almost gracefully.  Between the tan of his skin and the white of Heine’s flesh came a well of red, quickly yet softly sliding down either side of Heine’s curves.

Abandoning the knife, Badou leaned with both hands until he could feel both bullet and bone and Heine jerking away from him, but there was already enough dark liquid sticking to his fingers the he couldn’t quite tell if he was covering the broken valve.  Red spurted against the bottom of his fingers in time with what, he would suppose later, had to be Heine’s heart.

Heine, probably feeling hot blood slide into the small of his back and hearing Badou panic like a schoolgirl, looked back at him as much as he could without moving his lower half out from under Badou’s weight.  He looked frightened, and furious.

“Artery! Artery!” Badou wailed.

“Idiot!” Heine barked.  “Don’t touch it, you’ll—”

A tendril of steam curled from below Badou’s fingers.  A tingle of warmth, and then ... heat—

Badou yelped, jerking his hands back with a hiss.  A cloud of steam followed them into the chill night air.

Heine’s white eyebrows scrunched together.  He groaned, and then laid back down on the table like a puppy on cool tile.  “I don’t have enough blood for this.”

Badou watched several droplets of blood curve around the outside of Heine’s hip.  Red was making a little lake in his spine, and slowly coloring the edge of the thin scar chain up his back.  The centimeter-high geyser of blood burbling out of the wound had stopped, but blood continued to creep out, pushed by the rising level of regenerating flesh.  In a matter of seconds, as blood escaped, the color of the lake went from near black, to purple, to bright shades of red, and eventually orange and a tad of yellow at the sides.  The steam darkened: the last bit of blood was being burned off, along with the water from his cells.

It was a terrible, acrid smell.

His bloody hands on his hips and his foot bouncing nervously, Badou waited for the smoke to clear.  The wound was small, but there was so much blood—it had pooled along Heine’s spine to make a reservoir at least three inches long.  The rest of Heine’s white canvas of a body was stark still, stark white, even in the hideous yellow of the bulb.

That would have killed anybody else.  He could’ve just killed someone.

Why did it have to be so quiet in this damn church? Why did he have to be in a cellar cutting up people—?

“Badou? You okay?”

Droplets fell out of the lake, over the unblemished side.

“Badou?”  Heine propped himself onto his arm—the good one—sending all the blood oozing around the contours of his body.  When it came in contact with course white hairs, it sucked up the length of the follicle, turning the entirety red.  He didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t seem to notice that he was slowly turning red, and that streaks of dried blood were still in tracks along his jaw and throat.

“ _Hello_? Badou!”

“—Hello, Gentlemen?”  The door swung open, causing both of them to jump; Heine hit his head on the shelf, and was left grabbing his skull while Badou stared.  The priest closed the door behind him, so that it latched without a sound.  The tiny room felt crowded with his presence; yet, he fit the unfinished stone much better than they did, black robes blending into the shadows like he knew what he looked like.  He stood against the door for a moment, hands flat on the wood.

In the silence, Badou watched him.  He wasn’t sure which one of them Bishop looked at with his blind eyes.

Bishop leaned his cane against the nearest wall with a tiny tap, then proceeded to unbutton and roll up his sleeves.  Unlike the two of them, covered in grime, blood, and probably coke dust, he was immaculate as always, every strand of hair and fold of coat in place.  Just like any priest at 3 AM.  Any priest, Badou kept telling himself.

The chill of the room crept down Badou’s neck and into his shirt as he watched the man work.  His slender fingers, decided and sure, slid around his wrists and did up buttons, one by one.  There was enough light to see it well, though sallow: oddly enough light, Badou realized, given that the guy was blind.  It was always oddly clean in this room, too, given what regularly went on in here.

For a moment, it struck Badou that Nill, after not being allowed to bathe Heine’s wounds on Heine’s request, might be left to clean the room instead, digging the blood out of the stone table’s grooves with a sponge and one of those awls used for cleaning the gaps in ship decking.

The priest finished the last pearl button, and then he turned his head, and only his head, directly towards Badou.

He grinned.  His teeth were yellow in the light.

“Gentlemen, while there is a time and place for tortured screaming in every church, I do believe any more will attract the wrong kind of worshipers.”  They were soft words, sounds that died so quickly Badou wondered if Heine’s ears, four feet away, had heard them.  The man in black and white held his hand out in Badou’s general direction.  “I hope you understand.”

Badou just stared at him, uncomprehending.  The hand motioned toward him again, slightly.

He found himself placing the hilt of the knife into the blind man’s palm.  The flesh was unmarred, so unlike Badou’s own.

Bishop smiled, his fingers curling around the base of the instrument one by agonizing one, his eyes completely hidden behind two plates of darkness.

“ _Thank you_.”

Badou was still staring at that darkness when the man turned away towards Heine, who was looking between the two of them in that alight, innocent way he did when he was confused about social interaction.

Never mind that he was covered in blood and face-down, naked on a table, facing a blind priest with a knife.

Bishop stood with the weapon raised loosely in one hand, his head tipped opposite the angle of the blade.  From Heine’s point of view, the slanted shadow the light cast on him left a frightening impression.

“How much blood do you have left to lose?”

It was frank.  Not unkind.  Badou thought he saw a smile.

In a velvet whisper he added, “I smell a lot of yours, Heine.”

Badou did not move.  Heine did not move.  Light glinted off the priest’s glasses, off his knife.

It was a while after Heine’s mouth opened that words came out of it.  “Unclear,” he said, eventually.  His head tipped, slightly.  Much to Badou’s surprise, Heine looked around at the walls, and shrugged, his voice light and airy.  “I think I hit ‘catastrophic loss’ earlier and it triggered hyper-advanced regeneration of the blood cells.” He looked down at his legs, which had been starkly immobile, now that Badou thought about it.  “My legs have really fucking hurt since we left. And I didn’t even get shot there.”

Badou stared at the legs, the course white hairs so out of place for Heine’s age—both too young and too old for him.  At least he had the normal number of toes.  He also had no idea what they were talking about; he felt like asking, but . . . Bishop still held the knife blade above Heine—and utterly level with Badou’s diaphragm.

“Hm,” Bishop responded, as if oblivious to Badou’s presence.  “And how much just now?”  He placed one hand on the table, feeling around.

Heine checked over his bloodied hips with interest.  He made a querulous chirp of a noise.  “Dunno.”

“Badou?” Bishop asked, the knife held like a shiny pen. He did not smile.

Wary, Badou surveyed the damage on the table, which was hidden from Heine’s view.  He thought back to how long, and how wide, the stream of blood against his palm had been, but already it came to his mind as a loop of footage without end.  He would be seeing this in his dreams for weeks.

“L-less than a 1/2 cup . . . ?”

Heine gave Badou an incredulous look.  “Did you just refer to my bodily fluids like measuring out _sugar_?”

“Not that we can blame him for that, you look the part.  But I suspect if we cut you open we find something more sinister than flour or sugar, hm?” Bishop’s hand came down on Heine’s calf, and held him to the table.

Heine’s leg jerked, leaving both Badou and Heine to stare at the hand. The other brandished the knife like it was a cigarette.

“How . . . do you know what I look like?” Heine asked, quietly.

The light bulb flickered, and then went back to buzzing.  “You know how many times a day I get asked, ‘What’s with the kid with the white hair?’ And you told me you have red eyes, that’s why you can’t go up top; you don’t have pigment in your irises, so you can’t see God’s light very well, let alone bask in it without protection.”

This shut both Heine and Badou up, though Heine began to growl half-heartedly, a warning to fend off any more symbolism.

“Anyway, my little white lamb and my shaggy red lamb.” The line of the Bishop’s mouth thinned before Badou could sputter anything.  “Has the marrow regenerated yet, Heine?”

“Enough,” Heine stated.  He scrubbed at his hair, looking at the wall.

“Hm.”

“Wait. Wait, what the _hell_ are you talking about,” Badou cut in.  “What are you gonna do t’ him?  That’s my partner, you know! Sugar or not!  He’s not some lamb chop to put on the altar, you crazy fuck priest.”

The two turned to him, similarly pale and blond heads addressing him in unison.  Badou didn’t completely step back, but he leaned back quite a bit.  He called this standing his ground.  “Put . . . put that knife down when you talk to me, man.”

Heine’s look was nonplused.  The knife in Bishop’s hand was being held tight enough to imminently use.  The blind man grinned, the rest of him eerily still.  His black robes draped onto the table and melded with his shadow.  It cut across the floor—and onto Badou.  The silence was deafening.

“You just don’t know how to stop asking questions you shouldn’t, do you.”  His teeth reappeared, a glimmering smile.

“It’s okay,” Heine cut in, sighing and flopping back down onto the slab.  His head hid in the shadow under the shelf, and he closed his eyes, exhausted. “Just imagine that my bones were steaming,” he said for Badou’s benefit.  He heaved a deep breath; his chest expanded and fell in a way that was, oddly, reassuring just as much as it was sickening.  Heine rested his arm over his eyes, laying out distinctly the rope of scars from earlier, spattered across the forearm.  “And the steam had nowhere to go.”

Badou frowned, his stomach turning.  He looked away, but it still made no sense, perhaps because he didn’t want it to.  For a while, he and Heine just stared at each other, Heine blankly curious, pulling him in with his bright pink irises and youthful face; the face which Heine would never know was a sad one.

But, he perked up suddenly, turning his head over his shoulder.  There was a patch of pink at the back of his head, which didn’t seem to bother him at all.

Bishop’s hand was on Heine’s leg, curving around the contours of the bone.  Heine’s brow—because there weren’t really eyebrows to speak of—dropped heavily over his thin nose; a calculating look came to his eyes, of which Badou, for a moment, was vaguely jealous.  The toes on Heine’s leg curled inward, and like an injured animal trying to get away from a trap, he jerked away from Bishop’s touch.

Bishop held him still.

“It’s warm.”

Heine’s eyes narrowed.  Badou’s head tipped.  He took a step closer to Heine, away from Bishop.

“Yeah,” Heine said, slowly.

His hand unrelenting, the blind man tipped his head.  A tense pause went by, each of the three unmoving.  The light hummed. Badou could feel his heartbeat in his chest.

“You woozy, Heine?” Bishop asked.

“No more than normal,” he said.  The far side of his lips were twitching back.

“Badou, hold Heine’s head still for me please.”

“What?”

“ _What?_ ” Heine asked, jerking his head up so quickly that he hit it on the shelf again.  Using the opportunity, Bishop pushed Heine’s hip into the table.  He used his entire forearm as a lever when Heine inevitably started struggling.

“Hey, wait—!” Badou jumped on Heine’s shoulders.  The patient hit the table with a thunk, and immediately gritted his teeth.

There were a few quick movements of Bishop’s arm, and then a clink of the tool on the table.  Heine’s forehead was ground into the stone, hiding his face.  His shoulders were tense and shook  under Badou’s arms.

“There’s the problem.  The artery healed around the bullet, naughty little tree root.”

Heine groaned, a sad keen.  The toes of his free leg curled; his shin banged into the table. “The fuck is wrong with all of you! Give me my body back or I’ll fuck it up myself!”

His eyes were squeezed shut, his head ground into the stone.  Badou looked at Bishop.  Bishop looked at Badou—in a sense—with tilted head.

“Heine, the artery or your hip?” Bishop asked.

“Bone.  _Bone!_   The chips are . . .”  He rolled his head on the table; his hands pulled through his hair.  Eventually, he creened, and it turned into a rumbling growl without end.

Badou gave Bishop a pleading look.  Tremors went through his fist where it lay against Heine’s shoulder blade.  It was never a good idea to touch Heine, or to patronize him about his “doggedness,” but still he found his hand begin to stroke Heine’s back.  The muscles twitched, violently at first, but Badou was too traumatized to stop.  The motion went through Badou’s psyche, over and over, until suddenly he realized Heine was quieter, too.

Until Bishop jabbed the knife in up to the hilt.  Heine gasped, twisted, and reached to grip things that were not there.  Badou leaned all of his weight onto Heine’s back.  He was wild, and surging, and the only reason Badou wasn’t thrown completely off was because Heine was trying to hold still.

He had seen Heine throw a table or two, and maybe, though he had no proof, twist a metal door into shreds.  Badou had his throat pinned beneath Heine’s hands a time or two, but he had never experienced his strength like this.  Panic create amazing feats, but the muscle beneath his hands did not match Heine’s body at all. This was too much strength for this malnourished of body, no matter the circumstances.

The thought would linger with him for many days.

“Ah,” Bishop pronounced, “The bone healed around the lower half.”

Heine took a tight breath through his teeth.  His hands laid over his head, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.  He shook, bodily, and he swallowed down pain.  When Badou looked to Bishop, it was to find one half of him covered in a speckled spray of blood, the fingers of his hands red.  In the sallow bulb light, he smiled, yellow teeth unmarred.  Drips of red slid down his glasses.

Badou kept one forearm flat on Heine’s back, and raised the other between himself and the priest, a not so subtle gesture of preparation for defense.

Bishop, however, put down the knife, and opened his hand, as if for Badou to see.  He poked at a round mash of glinting metal.  When the monochrome of living color bled off, glints of grey were revealed, along with chunks of white.

The slug slid into a resting place in his worn palm.  The blood was soupy, and thin, though a couple of coagulated clots dislodged from the bullet, too.  The liquid was glossy and dark over his fingertips, and then orange as it spread.

Several tracts slid into the lines of his hand, into a dark pool slowly drowning the piece of metal.  It was smashed and twisted, nothing remaining of its original mold.

Steam. A trail curled upward in a languid tower between Badou and the priest, only to hit the back of the man’s upturned palm. Black smoke kissed the side of his hand and then continued to slide up toward the ceiling.

Heine’s skin was fusing together, little by little the carnage the two men had torn out knitting itself back together.  Each existing cell, replacing a lost one.  In a chain, link by link, bottom to top, until there was nothing visible of the wound but a smoke screen.

Bishop laid the bullet in Badou’s hand.  It was warm.

Badou immediately dropped it, recoiling.  It rolled into the semi-dried-up lake of red on Heine’s spine.  Badou saw it sink into red, not sure if he was going to be sick.

“You done?” Heine asked, sullenly, furiously, glaring at what little he could see with his head smashed against the table.  He was panting; a sheen of sweat was appearing on his back.

Badou stared at the mutant flesh exposed by Bishop’s incision, the thin scar only slightly whiter than the skin.  Pores might have been appearing, slight though they were, though there was a small bald spot around the ropey tissue.  The now-red hairs that were still there wavered in the air, as if nothing at all were amiss.

“Does it hurt?”

Badou’s fingers, already crusted with Heine’s blood, strayed out to the edge of the wound as if the red wanted to reunite with its home.  He wouldn’t remember asking, when Heine would bring it up later, at the diner some day late at night.  Heine looked back at him with a scathing frown, only to find Badou staring at his skin with a lost look in his eye.  It was mournful, the same way Nill was when she saw his scars.

Heine sighed, cradling his face on his forearms.  He would never fully understand the surface dwellers.  “Of course.”

“I mean . . . that.” His hand hovered over the scar.  A few more pores were appearing.

“The scars? No.”  Heine wanted to bite the man, but looked like he was waiting to decide if the sentiment was an insult or not.  “Just the tissue that’s still alive and whole.”

Heine jerked, suddenly.  His leg spasmed out; Badou found Bishop feeling his calf again.  “Sleep well, then, boys,” he said. 

With his finger and thumb, he picked up the mashed bullet resting in the divot of Heine’s hips and held it up, pink chunks, smooth white chunks, artery chunk and all, towards Badou.  Badou looked at Heine, and when the offering did not go away, he reluctantly held out his hand.

“Heine’s your partner, right?” Bishop said, his voice lowering. “Take care of all of his pieces.”

The slug dropped into Badou’s palm and left a trail of tiny red dots across his scar; the hot metal tumbled and came to a halt only after it hit the pad of Badou’s thumb and fell into the center of his hand.  Some blood dripped from Bishop’s palm to Badou’s as well, each drop a lance, a memory.

The priest lifted away his shadow-streaked red hand and smiled for Badou, red-splattered glasses and all.

“Sometimes, you just have to do things in the dark.”

**Author's Note:**

> To be continued in "Basements & Boarding Houses," coming soon.


End file.
